I spent most of the last 3 weeks at Tony’s T-House (click to see website), as he calls the whole complex of 21 homes in Ubud that he and Marita built. They each own one, as I mentioned earlier, and Tony let me stay in his. This is the view from the deck across the rice paddies that have just been harvested and plowed, so they are just shallow reflecting ponds.
The band that Deb put together, that she called the Fings, played a few more gigs, this is a photo from the Jazz café in Ubud.
She also booked a recording session the last Mon. and this is a photo from that.
As I mentioned, I rented a scooter for the last month. On a trip to Denpasar, the big city, I got a flat, conveniently in front of a flat fix place, so this is the only shot I have of the scooter that I took while getting the flat fixed.
The biggest news is that I got the Quasar Wave Transducer built (click to see a version on my website with description). In case you're unfamiliar with it, is is a low frequency feedabck sound sculpture that uses bass guitar strings tuned super low feeding back through an amplifier to produce soothing sound vibrations. I was telling people in Bali that it was a sound massage device.
I was able to find a great deal on the equipment I needed, and a connection with a speaker fabricator named Roy to build it. The whole project was completed for about $300. Here's Roy with me and the finished Quasar Wave Transducer in his shop.
Here it is at Blue Lagoon with one of the residents, Larry, testing it out by laying on top of it! It came out amazingly well, both in performance and construction quality.
As for the Restaurant and Spa, the building was so far behind schedule that I never had the opportunity to get anything designed or built for it, but I did make a model of the proposed bar (in brown cardboard) in the model of the building, seen here next to what was completed of the building when I left.
The next few photos are more views in and around the structure.
There is a village very close to Ubud called Petulu that Herons choose to nest in. I went with this friend Jamie to see them one day. It was really unbelievable. As you enter the village, all of a sudden every tree is filled with Herons, nesting or fighting and little chicks in nests everywhere.
One chick fell out of its nest and hit the ground hard. Here’s Jamie looking to see if its okay. It eventually got up and started walking. You can get a glimpse of what the village looked like, just a narrow road with a few shops scattered down it.
My friends from Taos, Christina Sporrong And Christian Ristow came to visit Bali for a few days, staying with their friend Phoebe in Semenyak. Here they are on the beach in Semenyak with her and a friend of hers walking some dogs at sunset.
They came up to Ubud for a day and I was able to get them to stay at these Italian friends I made, Diego and Linda, that have an extra bed that they let people stay for free on Couchsurfing.com. Diego is a pretty amazing artist, see his website here: divisionbell.weebly.com. I especially like his digital images.They have a pet fruit bat that they keep in a cage. Its over a foot long and its wing span is over 3 feet!
Here it is eating some papaya.
The view from their porch was spectacular, overlooking a river canyon.
I went to the Monkey Forest in the middle of Ubud with Christina while Christian went shopping. There are hundreds of monkeys just milling about waiting to be feed.You can see a little baby and some small ones besides the adults.
I finally did a little sightseeing, first with Christina and Christian to the biggest temple, Pura Besakih, up on the side of the largest volcano, Mt. Agung. A Temple guide gave us a tour. It was a pretty impressive complex of buildings dating back to 800 AD.
Many intersections have huge sculptures, I wish I took more photos of them. This is the Arjuna sculpture at the main intersection in Ubud.
Often in commercial areas they build stores where a temple is, so they just put the temple on the roof. This is an example of one on Monkey Forest Rd. in Ubud, but I saw the same thing in Semenyak.
Also, they do ceremonies all the time, typically marching down roads and completely blocking traffic. This was a bit more unusual as they were SITTING in the road. Notice the people to ward off traffic.
On my way to and from Denpasar there was a mile or so stretch of road that had many stone sculpture shops that I finally took some photos of. There were hundreds if not thousands of sculptures, mostly Buddhas and Ganeshas, ranging from a few inches to over 10 feet. I asked the price for the largest Buddha I saw and was told it was only $3500.
I took one more sightseeing trip on my last day. I first thought to go to the big volcano lake of Kintimani, but Diego told me it was too touristy and advised me to go to Lake Bratan instead. It was a difficlt drive, getting a little lost in the rain, but the weather cleared up and I had a nice day. The lake wasn’t so photogenic, but the town next to it had this funny sculpture of an ear of corn for their main intersection.
The view coming back was pretty spectacular, overlooking much of Bali.
For my last evening, I found this incredible walk not far from Ubud called Sunset Hill. No tourists seem to go there, only locals. The second photo is a zoom of the center of the first. It was a pretty beautiful end to my visit.
